Thursday, 4 December 2008

From Fairtrade to Sharetrade...

I was avoiding the topic of the American car companies as, well, it all seemed just too daft to me. However, an article in a Canadian newspaper, The Windsor Star, has snagged Missmarketplace into the conversation. A Ford dealership up in Canada has run a promotion giving away 100 shares of Ford with every Ford car. The dealership admitted getting the idea from a Texas GM dealer who ran a similar promotion. Now...this Consumer Marxism is one of those absurdities my dear father would have loved. You buy it, you own it, and some. Well, Missmarketplace has not ever worked for Apple, but, has worked on an Apple Mac and, indeed, has owned some Apple stocks in the past. However, Jack, my financial advisor scolded me for wearing my heart on my sleeve and advised me that one should be cold and disconnected from one's investments...

I think Consumer Marxism would prove very popular to the youthful and optimistic people still roaming the world, sheltered from the turmoil in universities or perhaps those still living in the family home -- people without worries and disposable income. I think this is an idea that ought to be fast snapped up by marketeers and rendered useless, but, holistic. "Keep our company and values alive"...(and, in the spirit of the Citicorp bailout, why not just make up a share value which is ideologically-based rather than market value based?)

But really. How could one attract a following to one of the car companies via the values marketing angle? Come join us for everything good and American, hugely wasteful on all fronts monetarily and environmentally, full of tradition and immune to change? That is certainly not a winner, and, it will be good for America to come to terms with it all shortly.

In the past, selling a product by offering a charitable spin has been successful in the past - pre-Fairtrade, there was plain old corporate charity -- Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream & Paul Newman products were the predecessors of Fairtrade, but, Fairtrade somehow seems like, well, less like marketing somehow. Or maybe I am just gullible.

Now, could we possibly morph from Fairtrade to Sharetrade? Not with those cars, but, perhaps with something else...